Tuesday, February 22, 2011

February has been a month of keeping our heads above water. It seems that nearly every week has brought some distracting and preoccupying event, either tragic, mundane, or just simply weird.

-The too-early death of my dear Aunt Louise the day before Elizabeth's baptism-A trip to Milwaukee to spend time with my family and attend the memorial service-My stupid cross-country skiing tailbone injury that kept me from accomplishing much of anything for several weeks-The never-ending cold that began when Henry started preschool and seems to continue to be making the rounds in our family-Elizabeth's pinkeye and ear infection, caused by the aforementioned cold-Elizabeth's eczema, which may or may not be caused by food allergies, and may or may not be helped by the crazily expensive hypoallergenic formula we're now using-Reading the details of an former friend's arrest for insider trading and subsequent betrayal of his best friend on the front page of the Wall Street Journal (I kid you not)

Okay, so enough whining. On to the good stuff.

Henry continues to love preschool two mornings a week. On his days home, we've been doing lots of speech practice and working through his Mighty Mind puzzles that he got for Christmas. He just reached the last puzzle and was very proud of himself.

We both enjoy "doing science" together so much that I've been trying to do something science-related most afternoons. We played with siphons and pumps as a grand finale to our unit on exploring water.

And now we've moved onto simple machines. I had picked up a few pulleys last fall, and Henry has had a wonderful time playing with them.

For Henry, the best part of the pulleys was that he could act our scenes from Thomas the Tank Engine with them. It has been all about Thomas around here these days, since he finally managed to cajole us into reading him the 400-page complete Thomas collection. It's amazing how much you can read in a month when you do two stories twice a day. Here's Henry gazing adoringly at the book...which he should probably do now, since this book may need to be "lost" sometime soon, for his parents' sanity.

Henry's also been building up a storm, and having lots of fun in our huge snow piles.

Elizabeth continues to be completely delightful, except for when she rolls onto her belly and gets stuck. (Although even then, the way she gets mad about it is pretty darn cute.) She finally has one tooth, and I just love her little one-toothed grins.

She's a pretty good sport about going outside, as long as it's not too cold and we pull her around in the sled or stroller.

All dressed up for her baptism:

She's also begun babbling this week. Listening to her sweet little voice just makes my heart melt. Lots of "bababalaalalalabamala" in the house these days. It's hard to believe that real words aren't many months away.

And of course, the requisite messy-face pictures. Greg points out that almost all our pictures of Elizabeth are when she's eating, but how can I possibly resist?

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Henry began preschool a couple of weeks ago and is loving it. He especially seems to enjoy the wonderful pretend play set-ups (recently, they turned their reading loft into a bat cave and put tubes underneath so the kids could pretend to be burrowing animals!) He's very proud to show me his craft each day when he comes home and always reports what the snack was.

Here he is on his first day of preschool:

And here was his first craft, a polar bear covered with shaving cream and tissue paper.

We're still homeschooling the other three days of the week and have been working through a preschool critical thinking book. One new thing we've started is doing a simple science experiment every afternoon. Apparently I forgot to take any pictures of these, but we've been doing experiments with water--seeing how water becomes ice and steam, and seeing what kinds of substances dissolve. It's become something we both really look forward to in the afternoon.

We've also been studying "Peter and the Wolf" (both listening to the music and reading the story) to prepare for a kids' concert by the symphony. The concert was this morning and was really excellent. Members of the local ballet danced the parts, and Henry was entranced to see the story come to life. The cutest part was when the wolf was threatening Peter, Henry would crouch down between the seats and peek out of the crack between seats. Here we are ready to go to the concert. (While it may look like Henry is chewing on a medicine dropper, he is actually playing the part of the bird on flute. :) )

Henry loves his new Highlights magazine and followed the instructions to make a pizza with a face.

Other than that, Henry's imagination has taken fire. The house is constantly a disaster, but it's well worth it (mostly) to see him do so much wonderful pretending. Some recent days at our house:

Note the fishing rod (that is, the crane), the store (that is, the white shoe rack) and the construction equipment (all the chairs in the dining room.)

Here we have Henry's "drum set". My favorite part is Elizabeth's wind chime hanging from the closet door. At one point he moved the drum set and told me I needed to hammer a hook in the wall to hang the wind chime. I have to draw the line somewhere, right? :)

And oh, the craft sticks. Why did I think it was a good idea to let him play with a box of one thousand craft sticks?

Following the trail...

Still going...

Done!

And I couldn't resist including this one.

And of course, Elizabeth continues to be completely adorable. She's really playing with her hands now, and she's on the verge of sitting up. She's also begun devouring her rice cereal.